In the days of the Plantagenets, “La Tour Blanche” owed that appellation to its having been frequently whitewashed. The earliest of these whitewashings took place in the reign of Edward III., since whose reign it is impossible to guess how often the grim old building has been externally whitened. In an illumination taken from an old French MS. made in the reign of Henry V., and preserved in the Harleian collection in the British Museum, of the poems of Charles of Orleans, the vivid whiteness of the old Norman White Tower stands out in bold relief surrounded by the dark towers and walls of the fortress. And after half-a-thousand years of London grime and smoke, the White Tower remains the same “Tour Blanche” of the days of the Plantagenets.
The old Norman keep of the Tower has changed but little in outward aspect since it was limned in the old illumination of the MS. of Charles of Orleans, some six centuries ago. The general features are the same, and even the little leaden roofs of the four turrets at the angles, appeared then much as they do to-day. No one has been able to inform me as to the period when the leaden tops first capped the masonry of this tower. Two great authorities on the history of the Tower—Professor Freeman and Mr Clark—have told us how Norman William, on crossing the Thames, found that London was protected on its landward side by a Roman wall—the defences of ancient Augusta—a wall strengthened by mural towers, and an external moat. Of these relics of ancient Augusta, a fragment is to be seen at the eastern end of the White Tower. According to both historians, the building of the White Tower was commenced in 1078. When a tramway was run from the river wharf, some years ago, to the base of the White Tower for the shipment of stores, the engineers had to excavate some 20 feet of solid masonry into the Norman keep, such was its huge strength and solidity. Freeman always writes with enthusiasm of the Tower—“the mighty Tower of London,” he loves to call it; and when he wrote of the Tower, he had the White Tower in his mind. Regarding the builders of the White Tower, Freeman quotes the following Latin text from Hearner’s “Textus Roffensis”—“Dum idem Gundulfus, ex praecepto Regis Wilhelmi Magni, prœesset operi magnae turris Londoniae, et hospitatus fuisset apud ipsum Ædmerum.” The name Tower, and not Castle, adds Freeman, belonged to the fortress of Gundulfus from the first.
It will be necessary here to give some figures and proportions of this ancient keep. Its height is 90 feet from ground to battlements. The Keep has four turrets, three being circular, and one square. The windows were much modernised by Sir Christopher Wren, but those in the upper storey are the least altered; only one pair of these, however, have been left in their original state. It was from this window that Bishop Flambard is said to have made his escape. A stone staircase, 11 feet wide, and built in the circular turret on the north-east of the Keep, communicates with all the floors and leads to the roof. The basement of the Keep is a little below the level of the soil on the north side, and is flush with it on the south side. The walls are from 12 to 15 feet thick, the internal area being 91 feet by 73 feet. The large chambers have timbered ceilings, and the smaller are stone-vaulted. Formerly, the basement and the prison within it could only be reached from above, by the staircase running through the circular turret. The great western chamber is 91 feet long by 35 feet in width. In the vault or sub-crypt under the Chapel of St John there is a prison called “Little Ease,” and here Guy Fawkes is supposed to have passed his last fifty days on earth. It opens into a great dungeon which is 47 feet long by 15 feet broad. Formerly, this place was in total darkness, and could have had but little air; at its eastern end it terminates in a semicircle. It was here that in the reign of King John some hundreds of Jews were imprisoned with their families. In later times it was fitted up into a powder magazine, and it is not many years since it was cleared of “villainous” saltpetre. Its walls have been coated with brick, and the ceiling refaced and vaulted, whilst passages have been pierced through its eastern and western extremities. A well 6 feet wide, its sides lined with ashlar stone, which may be of Roman origin, has been found in the floor of this vault, near its south-western angle.
Stone Staircase in the White Tower.
On the second floor of the White Tower the walls are 13 feet in thickness, the cross walls being 8 feet. On this floor are five openings communicating between the eastern and the western chambers. The latter is 92 feet long by 37 broad; a vaulted passage 2 feet 10 inches wide being constructed in the thickness of the wall. The eastern chamber is 68 feet long and 30 wide. There is a recess in the north wall which communicates with the exterior of the tower by a double flight of stone stairs facing the river front. And it was at the foot of these steps that the bones, supposed to be those of the little Princes, were discovered in the reign of Charles II. They were subsequently taken to Westminster Abbey. The present stairs are modern. An ancient door, 3 feet in width, opens from this chamber on to a short passage, 5 feet in width, cut in the thickness of the wall, which leads to the well staircase communicating with all the floors. Another door in the south wall leads into the crypt of St John’s Chapel, which is 13 feet 6 inches broad by 39 feet in height; at the east end it is apsidal. Near the apse is a passage 2 feet wide which leads into a vaulted cell 8 feet long by 10 wide. This cell has no windows, and when, in former times, the door, which has been removed, was closed, this dismal prison was plunged in total darkness. It has been asserted, without any foundation, that this cell was that in which Raleigh passed his first imprisonment in the Tower. There is not a shadow of proof to corroborate this. It was probably used in the early years of the fortress as a strong-room for the safekeeping of the church treasure. Although no proof exists as to the imprisonment of Raleigh in this black hole, prisoners were confined here in the days of the sanguinary Queen Mary, as is shown by some half-obliterated inscriptions which can still be seen on the sides of the doorway leading from the crypt to the cell. In one of these the following words have been traced—“He that endureth to the ende shall be saved. M. 10. R. Rudston. Dar. Kent. Ano. 1553.” “Be faithful unto deth, and I wil give the a crowne of life.—J. Fane. 1554.” Also the following:—“T. Culpeper of Darford.” These persons were implicated in the Wyatt insurrection. Lord de Ros mentions rather vaguely in his book on the Tower, an inscription which was discovered about 1867 “in the vault of the White Tower,” of which the following is a copy:—“Sacris vestibus indutus dum sacra mysteria servans, captus et in hoc augusto carcere indusus.—R. Fisher.”
Until some thirty years ago this crypt was used as an armoury, and here many may remember having seen a figure of Queen Elizabeth, mounted on a wooden steed, in a dress supposed to have been worn by her when she returned thanks at St Paul’s for the destruction of the Armada. (This is now in the lower gallery of the White Tower.)
The rooms on this floor of the tower are 15 feet high, with wooden ceilings, which are supported by massive wooden pillars placed in double rows. These wooden columns are comparatively modern, and were probably placed here when the rooms were converted into an armoury, store rooms, and record offices. They are now filled with small-arms, and the roofs are supported by beams strengthened with iron girders. The ancient fireplaces still remain in the eastern wall.
On the second floor of the White Tower are three great chambers. That to the west is 95 feet by 32; that to the east 64 feet by 32; they are 15 feet high. St John’s Chapel, which is on the second floor, forms its cross chamber, and rises through the roof to the top of the tower. A mural passage at the extremity of the western chamber leads to the west end of the south aisle. Mr Clark believes that this was formerly a private entrance from the Palace into the Chapel, being connected with the State rooms of the Tower, one of which is still called the Banqueting Hall.
The fourth floor of the Keep is called the State Floor, and is divided into three chambers 28 feet in height. The room to the west, which is called the Council Chamber, was the scene of that episode at the commencement of the reign of Richard III., immortalised by Shakespeare, when that monarch accused Lord Hastings of treason and had him taken out to instant execution (Richard III. Act iii. Scene 4). This chamber is 95 feet long by 46 wide. Within the exterior walls runs a vaulted passage communicating with the stairs in the north-eastern turret. It was in this passage, which is only 3 feet in width, that the soldiers were concealed when Richard had planned Hastings’s death. In Norman times this chamber was used as a State prison, and it was from one of its windows that Bishop Flambard let himself down by a rope. It was also the prison of Charles of Orleans in the reign of Henry V., and had probably served the same purpose in the reign of Edward III., and may have held in its walls both King John of France and David, King of Scotland; here, too, the brothers Mortimer were probably imprisoned in 1324.